Cognitive Load is a psychological term that defines the amount of working memory or mental processing required to complete tasks. Since a human working memory has a limited capacity, there’s only so much it can do simultaneously.
There are three types of cognitive load:
This brings us to cognitive overload.
Cognitive overload is when one is presented with too much information or many simultaneous tasks at once, often resulting in the inability to process or complete a task.
The same way your smartphone can start to perform slowly when you have too many applications running simultaneously is how your mental capacity can get slow when you try to focus on many things simultaneously.
In marketing, cognitive overload occurs when you bombard customers, users, or site visitors with too much information than they can typically process. It can be in the form of having too many CTAs, cluttered design, or too many in-between tasks when they try to complete an action.
While your intentional or unintentional cognitive overloading of your customers may be an attempt to get them to take some actions, it can have the opposite effect.
Eventually, they get overwhelmed with too much information or tasks and end up processing none or completing any tasks.
As a business owner or marketer, understanding cognitive load helps you find a balance such that just the right amount of information or simultaneous tasks are presented to users at once.
If used to your advantage, you can leverage it to communicate complex ideas and information to your users without overwhelming them.
Let’s look at some of the problems that can result from cognitive overload.
If, on getting to your website, users are bombarded with too much information, or there are many elements of your site fighting for their attention, it can result in them leaving as soon as they land on the page.
Cognitive overload causes friction on your website and results in a bad user experience, which can, in turn, cause users to stop visiting your website or using your products.
When your website appears too busy or clustered, lacks a clear call to action, or has multiple calls to action, it could result in cognitive overload for users. This, which can be frustrating, will cost you their attention and affect your conversion rate.
When users are presented with too much information or tasks on their journey to purchasing a product, they become frustrated quickly, which can result in cart abandonment.
Now that you understand cognitive overload and its impact, here are some ways to reduce it on your website.
Remove unnecessary visual elements that do not contribute to the user experience on the site. In addition, simplify the necessary elements that are on the page.
Another way to reduce visual clutter is by reducing the amount of information available on the screen at a time; this way, users can quickly process information.
A comprehensive buyer’s journey map is essential when removing conversion barriers on your website. Reexamine your conversion process, understand what’s going on at different stages, and eliminate elements and unnecessary steps likely to affect conversion negatively.
Stick to prototypes, layouts, labels, and functionalities that users are already familiar with on existing websites. This will help them process things faster and reduce the cognitive load they require when faced with similar tasks on your website.